Internet speed, bandwidth still years behind in Nigeria – Kolawole

Weekly Trust: Who exactly is Temi Kolawole? How would you describe yourself?Temi Kolawole: I am a huge lover of the internet, and a natural geek with an engineering background. I like to know how things work and I’m always full of ideas. This is as a result of very early curiosity I developed as a […]

Weekly Trust: Who exactly is Temi Kolawole? How would you describe yourself?
Temi Kolawole: I am a huge lover of the internet, and a natural geek with an engineering background. I like to know how things work and I’m always full of ideas. This is as a result of very early curiosity I developed as a child for many visual things like maps and flags. I wasn’t really big on drawing cartoon characters like many kids were but I used to draw house plans, town maps with streets and I spent a lot of time with my aquarium when I wasn’t outside playing soccer or video games. This made me become very creative, and I’ve dabbled into different areas like graphics, 3D rendering, animation, music and finally web design, which is what, has kept my attention since. I just got married and my wife runs an online fashion start-up with me.
WT: From all said you seem to be a dedicated entrepreneur. Tell us about your entrepreneurial background, did you start young or as adult?
Kolawole: I started Antigravity young, while still in the university. I moved to the US in 2004 and ran it on the side along with my corporate job until I quit in 2008 to face it full-time. I worked as the CIO of a small real estate marketing company in Atlanta at 22 and had good pay, but it just wasn’t satisfying enough for me so I quit. I couldn’t tell my parents I quit for a whole year after which I moved back to Nigeria to grab some business opportunities and launch Antigravity into the Nigerian market. Some of our first Nigerian clients were Bella Naija and Notjustok.
WT: How did you get started in web design and how did you know you wanted to pursue this career?
Kolawole: I started web design when my mom, who is now a retired professor, came back from a programme at the Michigan State University in 2000, where African women in academics were trained on web design and the internet. She came back with loads of books and software which the young me quickly jumped on and started playing around with. I mastered Macromedia (now Adobe) Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash, pretty fast and built my first few web pages. While in university in 2003, I was on my summer break where I interned at VGC Telecommunications in Lagos which was headed by my uncle at the time and during this period I built a website for his wife, my aunt. A lot of the senior partners at VGC Management got to see what I had done and were really impressed and started raining all sorts of praises, which surprised me. I didn’t think I had done much at the time but they did. This was when I knew I had a skill people valued, and I came up with the name Antigravity which speaks for itself.
WT: How did you come to specialise in digital strategy?
Kolawole: This came naturally with the skill-set and services offered by the company. Most of the time clients need more than one of services we offer which range from web development to internet marketing and other areas like reporting and analytics to measure performance. So, digital strategy came as a suite of all the services offered put together with one thing leading to another.
WT: How did seeking knowledge outside the classroom help you in your preparation for your career?
Kolawole: I don’t think much of what I do or know right now was learnt in the classroom as I only got basics of software development in my early years of computer engineering. The classroom teaches principles and discipline as well as builds our network of life-long friends and colleagues but outside of the classroom I’ve learnt an understanding of opportunities that exist in real-life and how to apply technology-based solutions to them. Experience outside of the classroom has also taught me a lot of social skills very necessary for a successful career and how to be able to power-network. I am not the most social or outgoing person but I’ve built a pretty large and strong network of people over the years which have at one point or the other become very valuable to business.
WT: Where do you look for inspiration in your day-to-day work?
Kolawole: I get inspiration from everything around me, but some of the most potent sources for me are magazines, TV commercials and social media. I follow a lot of creative accounts on social media which give a fresh feed of current trends. For example, all of 2014 has been about flat design. That is what is ruling the UX and design world right now, maybe next year it might become 3D text, you never know but just like fashion and music, design always has its trends.
WT: As a web designer, do you think every organisation should have a website and what positive impact does it have on the organisation?
Kolawole: I believe so. Every organisation has a presence somewhere, most of the time physical but this can hardly be accessed 24 hours like a website can. A website can also be accessed from anywhere in the world without having to physically travel to the location of the organisation. This easy access to information is what makes a website the first point of contact of any organisation and the 24/7 online office.
WT: How easy is it to sell to a client? How do you sell the importance of the web to them?
Kolawole: It is getting easier these days than the way it used to be several years ago but some clients still just don’t get it in this part of the world, especially brick and mortar stores. Store owners are used to making good money in Tejuoso and Alaba markets and it’s actually quite hard to convince some of them that they could do better with a good web presence. They have the “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mentality” out of fear of trying something new. The truth is the web can help boost any business by setting in place the right digital strategy. Even if it’s just increased visibility or affordable marketing all of this adds up to some extra dollars in one way or the other. For some businesses, the web can completely increase turnover by 100-1000 percent and they eventually start making more money via online media than their physical presence.
WT: People are getting on board with responsive web designs, but the number of different types and sizes of devices continue to grow. How do you deal with this?
Kolawole: I think the best way is still to follow the trends of fluid design. From analytics and experience with different web projects there are still only a handful of major devices people use to surf the internet whether via mobile or desktop. The top mobile Oss, are still Android, Blackberry and iPhone, with Nokia and Windows phone coming after and a few others. If you are able to cater to the top 3-4 types and then have one general fall-back for all the others, it’ll be fine.
WT: How many websites have you designed and worked on?
Kolawole: That is a hard question. The last time I looked through our portfolio I saw the sites going into the hundreds, and we even had to take off some of the old and out-dated looking sites. Looking through the number of website folders on my current machine, let me say around 400 plus?
WT: What is going to change in the next five years on the web in Nigeria and the world?
Kolawole: Let me start with the world. I think there will be a huge rise in mobile payments and mobile commerce. Everybody is rushing into this space right now the same way big players rushed into e-commerce decades ago and this will eventually trickle down into the developing world and Nigeria. Amazon just launched its own card reader which allows any merchant with a phone to accept payments on-the-go. This might take some time to get to Nigeria because of the setbacks of fraud of course, but I am sure we’ll figure out a way to make it work securely.  
WT: What sets you apart from your competitors?
Kolawole: Well, first of all I think we have one of the coolest names a company like ours can have, and also I think it’s our dedication to high quality work that keeps us where we are. There used to be a time you could tell whether a website was Nigerian or not just by looking at it. The fonts, colours, layout would all scream ‘local’ but we decided to change this and didn’t see any reason why a website belonging to a company in Ibadan should look any worse than a website belonging to a company in San Francisco. This is what drives us, to give all our clients world-class quality.
WT: What do you wish you knew before you got into web design?
Kolawole: I wish I knew a bit more about finance. That was never my field but I might still explore an MBA just to understand the business of business a bit more.
WT: What are some of the biggest challenges that you see facing the web design industry today?
Kolawole: Growth! One problem the web design industry in this part of the world has is the low barrier to entry which makes any geek with a laptop think he can start a company called webdesigntechworks. Yes, anybody can start a company, but if we all individually have our own one-man companies there will be no growth. When I started Antigravity, I had a partner, and we have an on-going hiring of both local and remote staff to keep the processes running more smoothly. Good thing we now have a lot more collaboration thanks to places like the CCHub and iDEA Hub; that brings a lot of skilled techies together as well as non-techies who apply their various skills in the tech world. Internet connectivity is still an issue as speed and bandwidth are still several years behind the rest of the world. Power also affects this when designers and developers have limited power and battery to work on. I remember how fast I worked when I lived abroad, and I have to admit being in Nigeria slowed this down slightly. This is why we still have remote designers in Europe and the US.
WT: Asides technical skills, what other skills do you think young entrepreneurs should have?
Kolawole: People skills, it is a must. This determines how well an entrepreneur can coordinate a team, deal with clients and even investors. Those with the best people skills end up sealing the most deals in life and this is something I am going to forever improve on as long as I live.
WT: What are some of your favourite projects you’ve worked on?
Kolawole: The State of Osun portal. That was one huge and exciting project. It was challenging in the sense that we had no idea how to get to the end-goal but after a lot of research, planning and analysis we got it done. I also enjoyed working on the new website for the Honeywell Group which we will launch soon. Once again, we had some requirements from the client that we had no clue how to execute in the very beginning but with enough research and creativity, we have created one of the best conglomerate websites in Africa.
WT: What would constitute success for you as a designer in your career? Do you have any defined goals?
Kolawole: One thing that will show ultimate success for me would be to redesign the official website of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I know this is something Antigravity will be involved in at some point in my lifetime and during one administration, I just don’t know which one yet. Another goal would be to own one of the largest e-commerce websites in Africa. We have some e-commerce projects in the pipeline and this too will happen in only a matter of time.
WT: Where do you see Nigeria in terms of web designing?
Kolawole: I think we are getting there quality-wise. Even though our designers need to drop some fonts like Verdana, quick and stop using tables and flash. We also need the overall appreciation of the web to grow to allow designers to get paid better. Some clients think designing a website is as simple as putting together a power-point presentation but it’s our job to effectively communicate the research and work involved in putting together a world-class website.
WT: What do you have to say to young entrepreneurs like you?
Kolawole: Firstly, entrepreneurship is not for everyone and even for those who it is meant for, there is always a right time. Some people might need to build themselves and develop in a regular job before taking the leap, while some might not. It’s all a matter of following your heart and doing what you are passionate about. I tell people even if I was shining shoes for a living I would be doing it on a large scale and maybe doing it for the president. It is not what you do it is how you do it. We all have skills and talents so it is just a matter of finding your strength and going for it all the way.